The extension of psychology in culture: desocialization and therapeutization of social problems
Abstract
Modern contemporary societies are immersed in a process of losing their communitarian categories of self-understanding. In this context, there has been an increasing cultural deployment of the use of categories of individual psychology to explain numerous situations of social reality (psychologization). Here, we will study this cultural extension of the psychological in one of its most representative expressions, self-help literature. Through a mixed discourse analysis (quantitative-qualitative), we will verify the basic elements of this psychotherapeutic culture, as expressed in the world of self-help. We will also see what conception of health emerges from this literature, as well as the implications of this conception. Finally, we will emphasize the wide extension (micro-spaces of everyday life) and malleability of psychotherapeutic categories in their cultural use, as well as the risks of emotional or psychological retranslation of issues with clear social or even political roots, such as family, educational or work relationships.
Keywords
Daily life, Mass Culture, Psychologization, Self-help literature, IndividualismReferences
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